National Poetry Month Reading of Walt Whitman’s SONG OF MYSELF
April 28 at 1:00 p.m. at the State Theatre in Traverse City
Call for Readers
Michigan Writers is seeking readers in the Grand Traverse region for the reading of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. The poem, which consists of 52 cantos, will be read in its entirety at the State Theatre.
This will be a community reading. We invite young and old, businessmen and women, politicians, plumbers, carpenters, police officers, firemen, people of all religions, races and sexual orientations to read this quintessentially American poem to their friends, family, and fellow citizens. Our aim is to gather together a group representative of the nation of which Whitman wrote and sang.
Each reader will be assigned a canto. Multiple readers (small groups of classmates or fellow workers, e.g.) may recite a canto in unison.
There are only 52 cantos, and we expect to have more than enough respondents to this call for readers, so please write to Arturo Mantecon at artmantecon@gmail.com to tell us that you would like to read. If you have a favorite canto, tell us why.
The selection of readers will be completed by April 1. The readers will then be sent a printed copy of their canto so that they can practice.